Fantastic Fest 2012

[Editor's Note: The following review contains spoilers for 'The Shining.' I assume if you're curious about a documentary about 'The Shining,' you've already seen 'The Shining.' If I'm wrong, sue me.]The Overlook Hotel does something to people. In Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining,' it drives caretaker Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) mad -- turning his writer's block into full-fledged, kill-your-family insanity. In Rodney Ascher's 'Room 237,' six different critics, historians and fans of Kubrick's horror classic share their own theories about -- and obsessions with -- 'The Shining.' All tell much the same story: they saw the movie once. They couldn't get it out of their minds. They watched it again and again. They couldn't stop. They developed elaborate theories to explain the film's mysteries and to uncover its hidden meanings. They were trapped in the Overlook, lost in its hedge maze, searching for some elusive truth. They still can't get out.

Quentin Dupieux, the mastermind behind last year's cult hit 'Rubber,' has returned with 'Wrong,' an absurdist follow-up in keeping with his debut. When Dolph awakens to find his beloved dog missing, it sends him on a journey that will affect the lives of a lonely pizza delivery operator, an eccentric zen master and his own landscaper. Filled with quirky characters, 'Wrong' embraces an even quirkier world that feels familiar but just out of reach -- much to its detriment.

Sight and Sound Magazine: it's time for a recount in your decennial poll. 'Miami Connection' is clearly the greatest film ever made -- at least on whatever planet it came from. Hilarious yet oddly touching, goofy yet totally sincere, this is one of the most entertainingly bizarre movies I've ever seen; not so much so-bad-it's-good as so-strange-it's-brilliant. The fight scenes are memorable, the dialogue is quotable, and the rock songs about tae kwon do and ninjas are impossibly catchy. Made and released in the late 1980s and then immediately forgotten, it would have been doomed to eternal obscurity if not for the efforts of Drafthouse Films, who recognized the inspired lunacy that everyone else had somehow missed. For their efforts, they've now got an unmissable cult classic on their hands.

The capper to the second-to-last night of Fantastic Fest 2012 was a "work-in-progress" screening of 'Paranormal Activity 4,' the latest installment of the insanely lucrative found footage horror franchise. Since the movie is unfinished, it would be unfair to write a review.Here, instead, are some notes on the film and the screening:

Ethan Hawke's Ellison Oswald may have the coolest name of a film character this year, but he's having a streak of professional bad luck. His first true crime book, 'Kentucky Blood,' was a best seller than accomplished what the police couldn't do in tracking down a murderer at large. That was years ago, however, and his follow up books haven't just been duds, they've led to wrongful actions that have put the public at risk. There's little love for him among police captains, particularly of the small town where he's just schlepped his family.If you've ever seen a horror movie, you should know what happens next. Don't ever move to a new house. That's one of the lessons of the goofy, yet effective, supernatural horror flick 'Sinister.'

An angry and confused young neo-Nazi on a personal journey that will change their life doesn't sound like anything we haven't seen before, except in this case the angry and confused young neo-Nazi is a woman. 'Combat Girls' is a unique coming of age story that subverts expectations and transcends beyond the crude lifestyle of its lead to find a beating, raging heart.

I've seen plenty of airbrushed actors in my time, but I don't know if I've ever watched an airbrushed movie before the new version of 'Red Dawn.' This remake of John Milius' conservative '80 classic strips away almost all of the material's political dimensions, turning a gonzo paranoid fantasy into just another slick action movie. The original was crazy and silly, but at least it was deeply felt. The new one scrubs and smudges the quirks away, along with anything interesting or edgy. It's pretty but plastic.

We've already known how creative Rian Johnson is, and Emily Blunt even attested to that fact back during our Comic-Con interview. Back then, the celeb gave us some tid bits about what the director has in store for us with his latest project 'Looper,' and we'll find out soon enough when it hits theaters this Friday, September 28.The movie tells the story of a designated hitman (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who kills people from the future who are sent back in time by the mob. But when he's faced with killing his future self (Bruce Willis) and "closing the loop," he misses the target and has to track himself down to finish the job.We had a chance to speak with Rian Johnson at Fantastic Fest in Austin, just a few hours before the film's premiere, to chat about what else we can expect.

I spent the summers between my junior and senior years of college interning at an independent production company that specialized in schlocky horror movies. I worked as a post-production assistant, and when I wasn't running errands, I was sitting next to one of the editors, watching him cut. Immersing yourself in the raw footage of a horror movie for hours upon hours on end has a funny way of desensitizing you. Ghastly images of viscera and gore start to make you yawn. Bloodcurdling screams become white noise. It's not spooky. It's not fun. It's just a job.'Berberian Sound Studio' is about a man who's having trouble making that leap from terror to tedium. He's been hired by an Italian production company to craft the sound mix for their latest horror film, a grisly tale of witches and torture named 'The Equestrian Vortex' (it's set at a horseback riding academy). The mixer, Gilderoy (Toby Jones), is an experienced professional but he's never worked on a horror movie before, and the graphic nature of 'Vortex's' content makes him uncomfortable. It doesn't seem to matter that he knows it's just a movie, or that without him and his legion of unsettling sound effects, the film would hardly qualify as scary at all. Something about it just upsets him.